A health ministry panel decided Wednesday to add Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands to a list of seven countries from which organ donations to Japan are barred to prevent the spread of the brain-wasting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Blood donations from the three countries have already been banned, according to the panel on organ transplants under the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
The panel also decided to re-examine within one year Japan's policy of banning organ donations from people who stayed in Europe for more than six months. The ban was implemented to limit the spread of CJD, a variant of which has been linked to mad cow disease.
Mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been detected in the European states and was discovered in Japan in September. A variant of CJD is thought to be caused by consumption of cow parts infected with BSE.
In response to concerns that CJD can be transmitted through organ transplants, the ministry decided in late June that people who had stayed in any of the seven countries for at least six months since 1980 are ineligible to donate organs.
The seven countries are: Britain, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Portugal. Transplant surgeons, however, mocked the plan, saying there is no point in taking preventive measures on BSE threats from other nations when Japan itself is no longer safe from the disease.
Three cases of BSE have been confirmed in Japan since September.